Occupants of vehicles such as cars, motorcycles, aircraft, boats or the like have a need to communicate directly with one another while driving. For example, a driver of a nearby or adjacent vehicle may wish to pass that vehicle, advise the other driver of an unsafe condition such as low tire pressure, vehicle malfunction and other safety concerns. Law enforcement or others may also wish to communicate with vehicle operators while driving for a variety of reasons. Further, it may be desirable to record and store visual images, such as video, audio and other data through cameras or other image capture devices to record and provide periodically such information for use in various applications such as safety, traffic management, law enforcement and the like.
Mobile peer to peer communication is well known. Cell phone users can contact each other directly through voice, email or text communication. However, in the driving environment, with unknown users in proximity to one another, no such system currently exists.
Further, systems and methods for effective and safe travel are also desirable. One such technology includes collision detection/avoidance, and involves breaking and/or selective maneuvering to avoid collision. Such prior art systems include incremental breaking at certain inflection points to avoid other vehicles, which may include sensed obstacles such as pedestrians (e.g., collision avoidance V2V or V2P technologies).
Further, there are well known techniques in the art to detect a risk of collision or other incident between a vehicle and another vehicle, pedestrian, or stationary object. A survey of some of those methods is provided in a technical report by Alberto Martin et al, “INTELLIGENT VEHICLE/HIGHWAY SYSTEM: A SURVEY”, Department of Mechanical Engineering Miami, Fla., incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. Some of those techniques rely on in-vehicle sensing, other techniques supplement in-vehicle sensing with vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to pedestrian and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication (see, for example, paper by “Cloud-Based Pedestrian Road-Safety with Situation-Adaptive Energy-Efficient Communication”, Mehrdad Bagheri; et al, IEEE Intelligent Transportation Systems Magazine, Year: 2016, Volume: 8, Issue: 3, Pages: 45-62, incorporated herein by reference in its entirety).